S3 EP22 What I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Electrical Business

Most electricians don’t struggle because they’re bad at electrical work. They struggle because they started their business without a real pricing strategy, sales process, or marketing system.

In this episode of the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast, Clay and Joseph break down the three biggest things they wish they knew before starting their electrical companies. From undercharging and free troubleshooting to awkward sales conversations and expensive lead flow, this is the roadmap they wish they had from day one.

You’ll hear why being the cheapest electrician actually hurts your business, how a real sales process changes the customer experience, and why marketing is either something you pay for, work for, or build systems for.

In this episode:
why pricing wrong creates unnecessary suffering
how cheap work attracts the wrong customers
why sales process is a business superpower
how standards and SOPs protect your reputation
why business is an apprenticeship too
how weak marketing forces you to “pay in blood”
what the real roadmap to $1M looks like

If you’re an electrician who wants more schedule control, better margins, more consistent sales, and a real path to growth, this episode is for you!


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The Whistler Service Summit 2026 brings together 26 of the best electric service business owners in North America for a full weekend of real training, real roleplay, and real answers at Nita Lake Lodge in Whistler, BC (Conde Nast's Top Resort in Canada).

Clay Neumeyer, Joseph Lucanie, and Forrest Schwartz will be in the room with you. Not on a screen. In person. Every session. Every meal. Every moment.

Here's a taste of what's waiting for you:
⚡️Clay covers Agentic AI and operations so you can run a tighter business without working more hours
⚡️Joseph brings his full in-home sales playbook. The Wizard of Options, live and in person
⚡️Forrest breaks down the exact marketing systems he uses to generate 400+ leads every single month

Two days of intensive training. A helicopter volcano and ice cave adventure for VIP. A welcome dinner. A group hike. Dinner in Whistler Village. And the kind of conversations that just don't happen on a group call.
One breakthrough this weekend pays for your ticket many times over.
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#electrician #electricalbusiness #pricingstrategy #salesprocess #leadgeneration #businessgrowth #milliondollarelectrician

Transcript

Business Is An Apprenticeship

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I wish someone told me business is an apprenticeship too. That would have just so easily solved a few things for me. Because for me, I'm like, oh, it's theory and it's practice. Oh, it no one says that. So instead, it's like trying to troubleshoot a freaking 12-inch junction box you just found in someone's attic with a rat's nest of wire from different decades. And you can tell people have been adding to it, trying to splice different things together. Like, where do you begin? I think that's still the biggest problem in business today. So I wish someone just let me know early on. Hey, this is an apprenticeship, and it's going to take a combination of actually learning. You're going to have to learn some theory to get good at this. And you're going to have to go out and practice that theory to be great at this. And it's the combination of the two and the realistic expectation that it's also a four or five-year apprenticeship. Like you need your 10,000 hours to really succeed and feel comfortable with the ebbs and flows.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast, where we help home service pros like you supercharge your business and park up those sales.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

I'm Joseph Lucani, and together with my co-host, Clay New Meyer, we're here to share the secrets that help electricians sell over a million dollars to a single service band.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Now it's time for sales. It's time for scale. It's time to become a million-dollar electrician.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to yet another great episode of the Million Dollar Electrician Podcast, powered by Duramax. We recently had Jesse on telling us about this massive generator boom that's been going on. Congrats to everyone who's seized that and made their market safer with more backup power than ever before. Joe, how are you doing today, brother?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

I'm feeling amazing because you started the conversation with generators, which immediately just increases my heart rate. I'm literally dancing around. Every time I hear power outages or storms or hurricanes, I'm like skipping and clicking my heels, man. I'm doing great.

Regrets From Starting A Company

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I love that. Today I want to make your heart skip for another reason. We're going to do a little bit of a blast from the past and talk about what we wish we knew before we started our electrical companies or in those early days that you know now. And it's like, man, if I was doing Greenfield again, what would I have done different? Couple things come to mind for you, Joe.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Oh my God. Yeah. Um, three right off the top of my mind. They didn't have to push me that hard. I'm like, things I wish I knew? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

So you got to choose number one though.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Okay. Number one.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

You told me number three before. I want you to, you gotta choose one that's like the number one. I know that's gonna be hard for you.

Pricing And Charging With Confidence

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Not as hard as you'd think. Because if I had to choose one, it would be knowing what to charge and how to charge it. And let me explain why. Like, obviously, if you have a better sales process, if you have better marketing, if you have better training, like all those things are necessary. But I was a good electrician when I started anyway. I just was priced horribly. I had no idea what to charge. I didn't know what the competition was actually charging, I didn't know what was reasonable, what was unreasonable. So we started off super cheap, super cheap. And we suffered a lot because of it. So if I changed nothing other than I'm already doing quality work, I'd be a small company, but I knew how to charge for it and actually be profitable and know what numbers to look for, that'd be the number one thing. Because I even if I changed nothing, I'd still make more of a profit, which would have alleviated a lot of suffering in the beginning of most people's businesses.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I I want to speak to that one too quick because I remember a time where I literally go and do work, and sometimes I would like just discount work because it felt like I was adding value for that. I was already priced too low, and then I would do additional discounts because I liked the person, or or you know what I mean? And I always felt like this will come back around. That's karma, that's the way this works. This will come back around, and it never did. Heck, I I've done troubleshooting for a couple hours that I ended up saying, you know what? We'll get you on the next one. That is not how you run a business. Yeah, and I literally it's such a long journey to come from there to here, but I couldn't agree with you more, man. Pricing problem one, huge.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah, you said something that just triggered a heart stab to the heart. I'm gonna, if anyone wants to laugh at me, this is an easy way to do so. We were so unsure of what to price. We had the value add policy of we'll do free troubleshooting diagnostics. And if we can't resolve it in the first hour, then we'll charge you. So it was like literally, if we went to a call and you found that it was like a breaker trip, I didn't know how to offer more options on top of it. I'd be like, well, well, here you go, problem solved. Look forward to working with you in the future. And literally just doing calls for free because we had no idea what we were doing.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

For the sake of saying it, for anyone that's scratching their head going, Well, that's not so bad. What like why do you think this is a bad thing to do in your business?

SPEAKER_02 4:54

So, like you, I thought it was a value add. I thought that like I'd invest in certain clients and these clients would respect me for it, and they would want to come work again. And at those projects, then we'd have more relationship and then as a result could close a higher premium. But it ended up not working out that way because what I was doing was massively devaluing myself, like to the point where they wouldn't respect me. So, like if I came in and I'm like, my time is so not valuable to me that I'm willing to come to your home, I've never met you in my life, and I'll do a free hour of diagnostic, and I'll only charge you if I can fix it. And that doesn't include if I can fix it while diagnosing. Like it made me look like I was desperate. And as a result, the people who would work with me worked with me only because I was cheap. It was like this guy does good electric work and he's solving my problem for free. Yeah, I'll call him back the next time. How much is he gonna charge me? A hundred bucks? Like so when we actually needed to charge someone, and we did come back to those customers, karma did not come back. The only thing that came back was a kick to the butt where they'd be like,$300 for four hours of work. What are you talking about? You're out of your mind. Last time you did the thing for$50. So I lowered the standard so far, thinking that I was raising it. And it just it it makes me embarrassed to stay even admitting it, but that was the truth. I thought I was doing the right thing, and it just turned out to be the exact wrong thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

You just reminded me of a story that's happened in this week, at the time recording this, uh, to one of our clients, Dwight. And maybe you dealt with this in class already, too. I actually referenced you when I was handling it in marketing class this week. There's a lot of fun. Someone phoned him and said, Oh, we called you because uh we Googled you, uh, looked up the cheapest electrician, and your name came up. And he was like, Holy crap, how do I undo that? And so I kind of did a timeout minute with him and I just said, Well, hang on, is this really the bad thing? Like, you got the call. It's just a pivot that you could do. And I was reminded of you with the pool job binder. And so I said, Why don't you try saying this? Hey, oh my gosh, oh, what a confusion! Like, I can't believe it said that. No, no, no, no. What it actually what it what it's actually trying to say is I fix the cheapest work in town, and that reminded me of what you would do with pools, and so we were talking through that. Um, but it just reminded me too what you're saying about being the cheapest guy.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Yeah, the coolest thing is that I I remember every time it's weird. You mentioned generators, my positivity goes up. You mentioned pools, and like my heart just clenches with stone. Like, I hate pools, I hate them.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah, it's um, you know, it's not always the worst thing if you just get the call. And that was the idea of that one. But it was a ton of fun to work through. Uh, we really enjoyed that. But yeah, being the actually being the cheapest is the problem we're talking about here. Here's my thing, Joe, with it, just to take this right into the outfield. I love helping people. So I was actually, and I know you're the same way, I was most susceptible to this problem. And that's why I also put it number one, like you did, because it's so much easier to just charge way less than you are worth. It's so much easier to use price as your maximum value builder. But what's the easiest, the path of least resistance is what everyone's gonna do who's a good person. And so I also wish I did know this uh early on. I wish I knew that even though I could be flat rate three, four, five hundred bucks an hour, I could have made those sales and held my chin high and still got the five-star review after. And that's a really important thing to know, especially when you're young or new into business or been at it for a while and just haven't experienced that yet. It's one of the biggest things we see major growth mechanisms when people start with us, right? Yeah.

Why Free Work Backfires

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Um, I remember having a huge unlock to a similar parallel where I used to side job when I was a kid, like 15, 16 years old, fresh out of trade school, work on the weekends and stuff. And I worked for a client and I was charging him the outrageous rate of$30 an hour. And then something like he called me back eight years later, you know, and I'm still new in business, and I charged$389. And the funny thing was is that he bought when I was$30 an hour, but would complain at how expensive I was. And then he called me when I was$389 an hour and he bought and then complained about how expensive I was. And I realized it doesn't matter what you charge. Some people don't want to pay anything, but they'll still do it if they feel it's necessary to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Yeah, and tying right into that, if we didn't drive this home clear enough, is like people feel more value about a greater investment. So your work actually increases in value just because you charge more. Now, a big piece of that though, of what I wish I knew when I was starting, I I honestly, Joe, one of my top ones, my next one, is gonna be up there with I'm between troubleshooting and quality management. I used to do something awful, and I'm gonna start with this because it's an admission of guilt. In my first business when I was doing concrete, and I think I may have said this before, I let some people down. I used to do this thing where it was that get in, get out quick, and like nice presentation, decent bill for the concrete, thousands of dollars for a job. But then when it was done, like I was done. You know what I mean? It was like a midnight move. It was just like, okay, time to go. Where's the check? Not, hey, were we able to meet the expectations that we set for you? Not is this everything you were looking for. No, no quality walkthrough, no quality handshake at the end to just say, yes, we received it. And I don't even know why, because it was like I was a one-man show. I wasn't protecting much margin. It was just my time. But I think I was honestly scared of the judgment on my work. It's really hard to put myself in that position now because, as you know, we're obsessed with knowing how did we do today? And please be brutally honest, how have we fallen short from our intended five-star level of service? And I want to ask that every single time. I wish someone would have taught me that in the early days. What are your thoughts on that one, Joe?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

So the thing that comes to mind is it comes almost the same thing with reviews, right? Because if you're afraid of what someone's going to say, you're not going to ask for the review because you don't want to hear the criticism. Maybe you don't feel strong enough to take it, maybe you feel it's unwarranted, maybe you're like the customer's an a-hole. But looking at it from now, if I don't ask how we did, that's the worst possible thing we can do. Because if they're not happy, they're not gonna blast me online. They're just never gonna call and they'll never refer me. And if my name gets mentioned, they'll tell about the terrible experience I had. So I can't fix it the moment I leave because they're just gonna be like, okay, here you go. Good seeing you, man. You take care. Write me the check, and I'll be like, Great, he was so happy, he paid without a complaint. And the inside he's like, I'm sh I gotta tell you about this horrible experience I have with this electrician.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah, I can describe the feeling living in a small town for a long time. It's that like, what is it like when you run into them at Walmart or the grocery store? Is it the duck and cover and get out of here? Don't talk to Miss Jones, or is it Miss Jones recognizes you and calls out your name like a celebrity in your small town or wherever you live because she's so excited to see you and tell you how great her experience was again and let the others around hear it? I'm with you there.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

I you said something that really just hit home for me, like like to my core, it almost triggered like inner trauma. My last name is very rare. It died out about 500 years ago. And we are the only living descendants of it in all of North America. There's lots of us in Italy, but we're all related at this point. There are no Lucanis that don't have blood with us. So I grew up with you're a Lucanny. You have to maintain the family honor, you need to maintain the family name. Don't let anyone think bad about you. It'll reflect on all of us, it'll ruin all of our reputations. So, like when you're like, I can't see someone at the grocery store, I still lived in my hometown with my parents nearby with it, like all that pressure from all those years of like, you no one can look bad at our name because anywhere else you find any Lucani anywhere, if you have a negative impression, it'll affect all of us like a ripple of a wave. So sometimes I would do things that weren't right for us to keep someone from not liking the name. So like I completely resonate with what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, and and then there's that fine line between being a good person, doing the right thing, doing the right thing by someone else. And that's why the pricing gets mixed up in it. And I I've never been a bad person, I've always maintained that. I've always tried to make good choices, although sometimes uh admittedly, those choices were not in the best interest at the end of those jobs. And knowing that now, those are the ones, you know, we all have this, the job we're embarrassed by. You know, as an apprentice, I once pulled an LIT analog. If my four to 20 milliamp guys, control and automation guys know what I'm talking about. I pulled an LIT, a level indicating transmitter tech cable to a light. And Journeyman's like, what are you doing? No, black cables are power, man. That gray one that goes to a device. Well, I cut it short now. Oops. There's all these little shame moments that we just we reflect on and we grow from. And so I think it's also important that I did those and made those mistakes. And I think it's important that if you're listening to this, you resonate with that and you have them too, because that's what makes us who we are, just like your experience and your Lucanny name, Joe. So it's not even like, I don't know, maybe I'm eating my own words here. I wish I knew. I just wish I had mentorship to go through that a little smoother, a little faster. And as we know, the reason we're here is because we really just didn't. We didn't have it at that time. You kind of had to learn through the trial of the fire. So that was my number two, man. What's your number two? What's something you wish you knew?

SPEAKER_02 15:20

So I just want to add one more thing to what you said, because I think you'll make it full circle and I'll jump into it. There's an expression that I was taught that good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. And the way that I almost feel redemption is I made bad decisions because I didn't have experience. And now I can make good decisions because I have made those bad decisions. But the thing that redeems me is that if I teach people good judgment from my mistakes, it makes me feel like, you know, maybe you needed to go through these things to keep others from going through those things. So like I could just jump right tohead to getting the the good decisions. It makes me feel really, really good. Now, the second thing was that if I needed to know something, it would have been I wish I had the sales process that I know now back then in year one. And the reason being is I really didn't know how to sell. Like it wasn't really it didn't come naturally. I hadn't been into therapy yet, I hadn't done any personal work, I had been working with so many different coaches that like I had a a conglomeration of different styles and it wasn't really effective. And I didn't know what to charge, so I didn't know how to price, and I didn't know how to quote, I didn't know how to option. So if I need to know something else, if one I knew how to price, but two, you're like, here's what you're gonna say, here's when you're gonna say it, here's why you're saying it, and here's a result you can expect. We would have made substantially more and been able to create a more greater impression in our in our area because no one else is doing that. So it would have been something that made us stand out right at the jump. We would have been able to secure more sales, which could have made our sc grow faster or bleed less. You know, I would have been able to now not have to worry about being awkward and I knew what to say at certain moments. So, like, one, I gotta know what I'm charging. But two, once I know what I'm charging, if I could then give them a better customer experience and then know how to like close, that would have been like an absolute like pull the slingshot bat and let it go.

Sales Standards And SOP Basics

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah, I can agree with that for sure. It reminds me of uh SOPs. I don't know if we've had this talk on the podcast before, but everyone seems to know what an SOP is, standard operating procedure. A lot of guys throw that language around. Oh, I need process, I need process. But the first word in standard operating procedure is standards. And often what's missing, I think I'm taking this a bit from what you're saying and from what I was saying, my number two was those standards. It's really helpful to have someone lay that out and say, this is how it should be done. Hey, you guys, if this episode sparked something for you, imagine stacking that every single week. That's how businesses stop flickering and start running steady. If you subscribe to the show or leave a review if you're on audio, and if you're driving down the road, please pull over when it's safe because I've got something you're not gonna want to skip. For every person that subscribes and or leaves a review and fills out the form below, letting us know that you did that thing. We're gonna draw one monthly subscriber for our open circuit lifetime membership worth$1,500. And that's not all. Every six months, we're actually gonna draw another subscriber for our$5,000 scholarship, which you can use for any of our electric service packages to get your business and your service rocking better than ever. Come on, guys, let's brighten this thing up. Is it gonna be you? Back to the show. Now, acknowledging both of us got into business and on our own journeys pretty young too. So we're the ambitious bunch uh that went and chose to learn that way. But I also think that's why it's really valuable to work with a provider who's already doing this at a high level, too, so that you can experience a higher standard. I know the family company I worked for for 12 years in different capacities, ending with consulting for them. Uh man, when we were done a project, it was like 10 binders, tens of thousands of pieces of paper signed off line by line, that we torqued the lug right, that the all the screws were in, that the panels properly labeled, that you know, everything was just had a bow on it. And it's everything everywhere. Every single thing had to be signed off. So that was my experience of like, okay, these are serious industrial with high safety uh implication and problems if we don't get this right. So I understand that's the highest level of standard. But then when I went back to residential in that game, you look around and you're like, there's very little standard here. Almost none. And it's even with the inspectors, right? So, like something I would do, which is going the extra mile, is I would take some of my industrial quality standard experience and I would translate that to the service game. So, like when I did a pool job, Joe, your favorite again, I actually quickly did a grid on a digital map and made my own drawing and showed where all the ground locations and where the cable locations were, and showed the conduits and the panel and where we entered the home to tie into the to the panel. So we would have all that laid out. So a lot of times the inspector would be like, Man, I know your quality is good. I don't even need to come there. Just send me the pictures. So then I would have a drawing and a picture document, and me and John didn't even have to meet, right? So, point being, man, I'm rambling on this one. But the first step, like if you're newer into this, is just setting that standard. Standard operating procedure, then, is just how we take our standards, what will uh hold to be our truth and our work, and make that a process, make that something consistent by just writing it down. And these days with AI, with uh fieldie, with plot AI, with all these different apps, like pick up your phone and talk to it. Just narrate what you're doing as a standard and watch what happens. And Joe, aren't we spoiled? Because you mentioned sales process, and nowadays you can just look one up and you could do it consistently. I don't think that's the bigger problem for people, though. I think, I think from what we do, Joe, I think it's and Tony Robbins speaks to this the strategy is kind of worthless once you read it. So you're saying, yes, the process, but wouldn't it also have been valuable to have someone like us to tell you this works, trust the process, go out there, get your state right, get your story right. This works. And if you do it consistently over time, you're gonna improve and you're gonna see the results. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Well, we'll tell. Two things. One, you mentioned inspectors, and I would get back to what you're saying. Um, I personally think that you're right. I think the standard for inspectors needs to go way up because it would weed out a lot of bad electricians. Like there were a lot of situations where we got known for really good work, and the inspectors would be like, Oh, you're on it. Okay, no problem. Whereas I had one guy literally put a sticker on a panel that was still in the box. Because he was like, it's good, I know it. And then there's other inspectors who won't climb the roof to check your mask to make sure it's you know properly tarred down because they don't want to get on a ladder. But if the standards were higher there, it would force us to have higher standards as a whole industry, which would keep the tire kickers, you know, be like, hey, you want to moonlight it? That's fine. What do you really gotta operate at this level? So that's the first thing. The second thing is I agree with you in the standards, and it makes a lot of sense. There's a little bit more to why I needed the process myself, is because like right now, everyone's seeing me with years of therapy and self-evaluation and all that. The process was eventually made. Like it's one of the main reasons was it taught me how to communicate when I didn't know how to communicate. So, like it would have been handing me the keys to understanding years of personal development, like this is what it is, and this is why you're doing it, and this is the result you can expect. And here's why you can say it say this, don't say that. And it would have been like, oh my God, this all makes sense. Now I can actually talk to people. So personally, I think it was a huge unlock for me. But I do agree with you that if you have a standard and you're willing to say, I'm not gonna walk away with it until a standard is reached, and I'm not gonna hire someone and let them move on to their next job unless they can operate at my standard. Because the moment they go below it, that's what tortures your reputation. So we're we're in agreement. I just had more personal investment in needing the system because I couldn't communicate well.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Yeah, it makes sense. A lot of times you see people come in and it's like, yeah, they need the standard, they need the process, but it's also like, well, I kind of knew I had to do something like this. This kind of makes sense, right? It makes sense why we go to the panel first. It really does. When you stop and think about it, hey, if we actually care about safety, wouldn't we have to do this? But what else would you do? And the fact that no one else will, or very few others do, just sets you aside and builds your value. So it's like, okay, process makes sense. But then it's also, and I love this about the community we've built and the open circuit and the app. If you're not in the SLE Pro app, uh you can check it out. ServiceLoopelectrical.com forward slash pro dash app. Uh, it's always linked below, guys, so you can get in there, uh, no problem. Um, but really important because even I'm meeting with someone after this, James, who said, Man, one of my favorite things about the app is those wins keep inspiring me to keep doing this good work. Just follow the play, follow the process, just keep doing it. Even if it's not working for me a thousand percent just yet, it's that motivation to know that it is working. And you just couldn't have that before. So, to me, that's a big part of it too. Like the confidence to manage and keep your state up. Uh, we're gonna run out of time, so I have to be careful. So I'm I want to say my third one because I'm selfish and I'm not dishing you. You're gonna have to fight for your number three after me. Okay. I'm being a dick here today. Take that podcast world. Uh, I'm just teasing, guys. Number three for me, I wish someone would have said this to me. I wish I would have understood because I loved the apprenticeship model of electrical. I wish someone told me business is an apprenticeship, too. That would have just so easily solved a few things for me. Because for me, I'm like, oh, it's theory and it's practice. Oh, it no one says that. So instead, it's like trying to troubleshoot a freaking 12-inch junction box you just found in someone's attic with a rat's nest of wire from different decades that you can tell people have been adding to it, trying to splice different things together. Like, where do you begin? And I think that's still the biggest problem in business today. So I wish someone just let me know early on. Hey, this is an apprenticeship, and it's gonna take a combination of actually learning. You're gonna have to learn some theory to get good at this, and you're gonna have to go out and practice that theory to be great at this. And it's the combination of the two and the realistic expectation that it's also a four, five-year apprenticeship. Like you need your 10,000 hours to really succeed and feel comfortable with the ebbs and flows. And the did you mention marketing already? I didn't mention it yet, but I was going to spoiled it. All right. That's all the marketing and the sales process that you did mention and the install quality that we're talking about. These are all different little mechanisms that our business has to hold and to help. And so I just wish someone told me that. Yeah. All right, John.

Perfect Practice Over Time

Marketing Without Paying In Blood

SPEAKER_02 26:52

I want to no worries. I want to give a shout out uh to one of our clients and a personally good friend of mine, his name is Emilio. He taught me a quote that I'm never gonna forget. And the argument was, you know, practice makes perfect. You know, it's an apprenticeship. You got to grow, you need your hours. But that's not always the case because there have been electricians who've been in business for 30 years and still can't figure it out. So the quote he taught me was perfect practice makes perfect. Because if you do something the right way enough times, that's what creates the proper muscle memory. So that's first is a huge unlock. The second was my third was marketing, like you mentioned, but I just want to explain why. Right? I had a lot of time to study. I didn't have much of a social life, so you have a lot more time to invest in figuring out you being good. Because I was in a room of HVAC guys who were closing all these huge jobs, and I'd sell a panel at five grand and be like, what? You didn't sell 40 grand this week? Like, what are you talking about? So I agree that the wins are super necessary. Now, the reason why I need to do marketing was because our cost per lead was so high, because we believed the hype that, oh, you pay a marketer and then you just pay them more, and then you just pay them more, and if it's not working, you pay them more. And if that doesn't work, you pay them more on top of that. Whereas we learned by, you know, all that we teach, we could have been organic. I could have been hosting more events, I could have been on Facebook when Facebook was even bigger, I could have been doing all these different channels, and I didn't know. So though we were making great money because we were able to close decent sales at a high level, we were losing a lot of money because we were spending so much to get the leads, even though we had you know amazing reviews and good quality work. If I knew how to market myself, the margins would have been insane. Because we I already feel like we were good electricians, we had good standards, we were obsessed with it, but we couldn't get into enough doors without constantly just shelling and shelling and shelling. So if I knew how to price, if I knew how to follow a process and talk to people in a way that would actually have been like effective, and then I knew how to get into doors without constantly pain and blood, I'd say that I think we'd be the top three unlocks for the first. You know, if you if I had if I had gone to my head top three, I'd say that's where I start.

Win Of The Week

Slow Season Follow Up And AI

SPEAKER_01 29:06

I want to, I wanna agree with your number three and call attention to it. In fact, guys, I'm gonna teach you something about marketing in just a moment that should blow your hair back and make you rethink what you know about marketing today. But yeah, I know Joe, you've got no hair to blow back, but appreciate that, man. Appreciate the gesture. Uh for all the ball brothers out there, it's gonna blow your eyebrows back. Uh okay, so win of the week this week is actually uh Forrest just shared with me. He just did a little uh testimony interview with Dylan. Dylan spent$950 on Facebook ads, followed up a number of times with one of his first day leads, and came up with a$20,000 plus dollar sale based on those efforts of just following the play. So this is a massive return on investment over 20x. That's uh some awesome, awesome numbers. So congratulations, Dylan, on win of the week there. I know we haven't done that one for a little bit, but it's super important, and I want to make sure we get back to it because there's wins every single day to be sharing. Here's the marketing nugget, then. I got off a call with someone even earlier today who is feeling like, hey, slow time, slow seasons upon us. Yeah, there's lots going on in the world right now, lots of reasons to feel that scarcity mindset creeping in, Joe, just like you're saying, when you started out, not understanding it, CPL is going up, lead flow is slowing down. What do we do? It's really important to recognize that the key players that get through these slow periods tend to also learn and grow in a certain way. And I think it's all about the skill sets around appointment setting and repurposing, retargeting and feeling comfortable re-reaching out to existing leads and making sure we make the most of every single lead that comes through the door. Like if you missed calls yesterday and you only tried to call them once, one follow-up, and never got in touch with them, uh, shame on you. I would call that person three times yesterday. And I would take that all the way to 10 times trying this week, just like Forrest said on his podcast. Um, at the time of this, Forrest has a webinar, by the way, going on tonight. When it's released, uh, there may be a replay available. Uh details below on that and how you guys can get access to that. It's in the SLE Pro app. However, it's just important to know that we have more control than ever before with AI, with what's going on. Even us, we've programmed a software which I believe to be the best in the world in home services and marketing that automatically, like once you're plugged in on your Google, it automatically measures your presence, your keywords. If you're rising up in keyword rankings or falling, what's happening with that as other people work on theirs? And it also measures it in comparison to your website and other people's websites and gives you bi-weekly reports automated in your market, including heat maps and an overview. So you always know what to do to improve your marketing. There's this old, old fallacy that marketing something like Joe said, you pay someone and it goes away and you don't have to worry about it. Or you do this thing, you did it in your post, and then you don't have to worry about it. You guys, marketing is one of the big three pillars in your business that you will always have to do. And it's going to come in a couple of varieties. You're either paying for it, you're either working for it, or you're putting people to work for it in your business. That's really it. And then you've got two main categories. You're capturing intent from people that are ready to buy looking for an electrician today, or you're interrupting people and trying to move the electrical work that they know about up their honeydew list or educate them on something new that they should have on their honeydew list. That's everything in marketing for you. If you don't have clarity today, if you honestly don't know where you rank and how to optimize for the people searching for an electrician, you need that. Please, please, please uh grab the link below for a free marketing strategy call. We can do an audit on your account and actually just show you and produce a report to see how is your marketing going? What does need to happen next? How do we improve this? Because in the AI age, which we're already capitalizing on, I promise you there's only more coming. And what that means is everyone's competing on these foundations and the AI is going to do it for them. And if you're not in that race competing with that to stay up afloat and on top, then you're going to fall behind. And you'll be reliant entirely on the networking. You'll be reliant entirely on door knocking or cold calling or referral partnerships. Those things are great to have, and you should have them too. But the foundations in digital, the interrupts like Dylan win of the week to make sure that we're capturing those above average high-ticket leads like panels and those in-person grinding, pounding the pavement. And if you do all of that, then the only thing I know is you're going to do so much better than if you don't. And I think it's really important that you guys hear that and take advantage of it. Joe, anything to add to that rant on marketing?

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Honestly, I just I can't stress that I agree with you anymore. Like it's you and I are on the exact same page. And the thing is, it hits so close to home because that was the one thing I know I was not doing right. And as you're saying it, I'm thinking back and be like, you know, I should have been on my personal Facebook page on more. I should have been having a I should have known the good neighbor policy later where I would actually know how to knock on doors. And honestly, it's shit, it's weird because like my number three, I agree, my number top two are in place, but like three cannot be understated. If you don't know your marketing, you're just paying in blood. And it becomes such a risky game because someone who knows what they're doing can overtake you with far less effort and far less expense. And the only way I can catch up without knowing is being like, here's more money. Even if I'm not making money, here's more money. Figure it out for me because I have no idea what I'm doing. So it hits it, it just hits so close at home, clay.

Roadmap Recap And Closing

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Absolutely. To close this one out, guys, I want to say that we just gave you a basic roadmap to being a million-dollar electrician or electrical business. In fact, one of our next interviews coming up is round two with Nathan Miles. You guys may remember he hit uh 75K first 30 days of business ever. And he's coming back to show us how he had a 750K trend up until three quarters, almost the full year, and finished over$900,000 in his first year of business. So close to that million dollar electrician status in under a year, but also just such a celebration, such a great story. And I, and and Nathan followed um all these things that we talked about here today. So can't wait to share that with you guys. Thanks for joining us here on this podcast. As always, powered by Duramax. Joe, anything else to add for you, brother?

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Honestly, just I wish everyone who's listening to this blessings because this is such a huge unlock for people who may not even know they needed to hear it. So if you hear this and it's resonating with you, sit with it, replay it, absorb it again, because we're all learning something here. And if you can learn from our experience, you don't have to make bad judgment to get the experience.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Awesome. Well said, man. All right, guys. We'll see you again next week. Cheers to your success. Take care, friends.